I don't mean crazy in the sense that the Maes-McInnis race nearly went into overtime or the fact that more than 190,000 presumably sane Coloradans decided, many in the privacy of their own homes, that, yes, Dan "It's All About the Bike" Maes was the perfect man to run the state of Colorado.

Or in the way that poor Andrew Romanoff has officially redefined our political vocabulary. Once upon a time, people would talk about a candidate, in defeat, throwing in the towel. But as far as I know, Romanoff is the first senatorial candidate to have literally tossed away his house. He didn't just lose his shirt. He lost the closets too.

No, what's really crazy is that in this year, in which Democrats are expected to get clobbered across America, they start the regular-season campaign in Colorado as favorites to win both the governor's race and the U.S. Senate race.

How could this happen?

If you ask the poets, they'd say something about the best-laid plans of mice and men.

If you ask GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, he'd say — if he were honest — he has no idea, but does anyone know when he can catch the next bus out of town?

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The Republicans actually had a plan — and it wasn't to hope that Scott McInnis would win the gubernatorial primary and then have, say, Bill Owens lead a delegation to beg him to quit.

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The news is that Republicans had recruited Re/Max founder Dave Liniger, who would bring the balloon and also many millions of dollars with him, to take McInnis' place,if McInnis had actually won.

This may not be the season to handpick candidates anyway — see: Norton, Jane — but Owens and gang would have a good argument for McInnis: If you barely beat Dan Maes, how do you expect to beat anyone else?

What we know is that there's no way Maes — who needs the job — would ever quit. In fact, the biggest question about Maes as the night ended was how much mileage he'd charge for the trip from his Evergreen home to his LoDo campaign party.

But if it's Maes vs. John Hickenlooper vs. Tom Tancredo, that means both a three-ring circus and a certain Hickenlooper victory.

And then there was the Senate campaign, which was supposed to be a slam dunk for Norton. If you'll recall, Norton was recruited by that same GOP braintrust that brought you, over the past few election seasons, Pete Coors and Bob Schaffer and Bob Beauprez. The field was meant to be cleared for Norton, and Ken Buck very nearly went along.

And then he didn't. And then he became the Tea Party favorite. The thing about Tea Party favorites is they can win primaries, but we're waiting to see about general elections. I'm not sure most Coloradans are ready to question whether Social Security is constitutional or whether wearing boots is a better way to go than wearing high heels.

Buck's campaign is unlike any I can recall in Colorado. It's not just that he was an insurgent. This is supposed to be the year of the insurgent.

But the insurgent couldn't raise any money in his race against Norton. Most of his campaign was based on anti-Norton TV ads paid for by, well, no one even knows who paid for them.

Can Buck beat Michael Bennet? Of course he can — if the national wave against Democrats is strong enough and if Buck's Princeton folksiness outfolks Bennet's Yale folksiness.

But Bennet rode big money and Barack Obama's help and a few Romanoff mistakes — first lesson: you don't call your opponent a looter in a primary race — to victory. Populism lost. Bill Clinton, who endorsed Romanoff, lost to Obama again. And if there's a lesson, it's that the anti- incumbent tide may not work unless the incumbent has been in Washington for at least two years. (By the way, Bennet easily won Washington County. You see, TV ads do work.)

Romanoff, of course, lost everything. He tried to run as an outsider when he has been an insider his entire political life. It didn't work. He tried to run as a progressive when his politics are Colorado Democratic moderate — almost identical to Bennet's — and that didn't work either.

Romanoff has always been cautious — until now, until he sold his house to run attack ads, until he went nasty in the end. This was a race too far for Romanoff, who was vastly outspent, and you have to wonder if he has any future left in Colorado politics.

He wasn't the only loser, of course. Josh Penry left the governor's race and became Norton's campaign manager. Norton lost, and Penry — who is plagiarism-free and who has never mistaken a red Denver bike for a black U.N. helicopter — would surely have beaten McInnis and/or Maes if he had stayed in that race.

That wouldn't have been crazy enough for this wonderfully strange primary race. Maybe next time.